


(Fit Together Like) Puzzle Pieces

by prouvairablehulk



Series: Tumblr Prompt Fills [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Fantasy AU, M/M, this is where my thing for Len and Rubix Cubes first started
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 12:10:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6753274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prouvairablehulk/pseuds/prouvairablehulk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mick Rory is never going to understand the dragon up the mountain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Fit Together Like) Puzzle Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> This is in response to a prompt from the lovely joker-quinn, who asked for "ColdWave - Dragon!Len collects puzzles, right down to Rubix cubes and Sudoku" and got this

Mick Rory is never going to understand the dragon up the mountain.

While he’ll be the first to admit that a mercenary from a tiny village is hardly the foremost expert in dragons, he’s pretty sure the very best and brightest in the capital’s University and the most experienced questing knights wouldn’t understand the dragon up the mountain either. To start with, he doesn’t want maidens as offerings, or princesses, or virgins, or even cattle. That’s not typical behavior, even Mick knows that. And he doesn’t want gold, or gems, or anything valuable, like your average scaly terror. 

No, he wants puzzles. As many as the villagers can get their hands on, any format, once a month. And when they send Mick up the mountain with the sack, every month, for a fee of things Mick can set on fire in addition to room and board, he insists on Mick calling him Len.

Len.

When Mick asks what kind of dragon calls themselves Len, he gets one of the deadliest glares he’s ever received in his life in response, and has to duck a sweep of a massive blue-scaled wing that he thinks is the dragon version of a cuff upside the head.

“I do. Are those my puzzles?” 

Mick leaves them on a stone and absolutely does not flee the scene. He just needs to go before Len the (relatively) friendly dragon completely destroys his worldview. 

The third month that Mick makes the trek up the mountain with a sack of Sudoku books, he’s met at the entrance to Len’s lair by a tiny Fae who leaves a trail of gold dust behind her as she flits about. Her eyes are narrowed into slits as she looks over at him, and he gets the distinct impression that she might attempt to stab him, or at the very least fly at his face aggressively until he goes away. A long stream of ice emerges from the cave, missing her intentionally, and her reply is laughter like tiny silver bells. Mick could have lived a very long and happy life without knowing that tiny-silver-bell laughs could sound that menacing. 

“Don’t mind Lisa.” says Len, cheerfully. Lisa shoots Mick a look that suggests he should, in fact, mind Lisa a whole lot. “She’s rather aggressive to people she doesn’t know.”

Mick thinks this may be an understatement, leaves the sack on the usual rock, and leaves before Lisa’s gold dust can make him sneeze any more than it already has. 

Month six’s sack includes a rubix cube. Mick didn’t know dragons could make that kind of sound (he resolutely refuses to think of it as a moan), and he has to leave abruptly before the whole situation becomes significantly more awkward. 

Month seven’s delivery is rather rudely interrupted by a man sitting, perched, on the rock that Mick usually leaves his sack on. He’s dressed comfortably in warm-looking black and a deep blue cloak with a fur-lined hood in deference to the seeping chill of the oncoming winter, and his eyes are the bluest blue, like ice, like Len’s scales. His long, elegant fingers are toying with a half-solved Rubix cube. He unfolds himself from the rock when Mick enters the clearing, and smiles warmly in greeting. 

“Mick!”

The stranger is a few inches shorter than Mick himself, and while his muscle mass is smaller, there’s no denying the strength in his shoulders. It takes Mick a minute, and a rather impatient ‘give it here’ hand gesture, before he realizes he’s talking to Len himself. He’s rather surprised when Len turns wordlessly back to the cave once the sack has changed hands. 

“Aren’t you coming?” Len asks over his shoulder, and Mick resigns himself to always being on the back foot when it comes to the dragon. He catches up to Len halfway down a stone corridor and finally asks the question that’s been bothering him for the last seven months. 

“Why puzzles?”

“They’re distractions, while I plan – this.”

The pause before the last word is deliberate, so it is spoken at the same time as Mick rounds a corner and is confronted with the single most beautiful heist plan he has ever seen in his life. The goal appears to be the crown jewels, or maybe the Mint’s gold supply, but Mick doesn’t really care because there’s a score and step seven of the plan involves him burning down a whole building. Len is grinning in a way that shows all his teeth and precisely no humor, and Mick might be just a little in love. 

“Are you in, or are you out?” he asks. 

Mick is in. Mick is all in, and not just for the heist. On his way out of the cave, a burst of gold dust proceeds Lisa’s tiny form appearing so close to his face that she’s blurred. 

“You fuck this up, or hurt him in any way –“ she snarls. 

“I won’t.” says Mick, and there’s an unfamiliar tone in his voice. He thinks it might be awe, or worship, or devotion. Loyalty hovered on the tip of his tongue, but that’s always been a dirty word for mercenaries. Whatever the tone is, it seems to appease Lisa, and the Fae disappears during the sneezing fit that her dust induces (if Mick wakes up sweating that night to the sound of tiny gold bells, that’s his own business. And if he wakes up sweating with visions of bare, strong shoulders and ice blue eyes and the echo of the noise Len made when gifted a Rubix cube, then he’s not going to talk about that either).

Eight months after he dropped off the first sack of puzzles, Mick is lying on his back in a beautiful bed, covered by a ridiculously expensive and lush quilt, in a luxuriously decorated tower, trying to catch his breath. Len is lazing beside him, eyes half-lidded and pleased. Lisa is somewhere else in the tower, surrounded by the entire national gold reserve, and the Royal Crown is hanging off the bedpost near Len’s head. The plan went flawlessly, and Mick is definitely in love. Len’s fingers trail across the burn scars on Mick’s shoulder like they are a maze to be solved, and Mick allows himself to admit that the feeling resting comfortable in the pit of his stomach, next to the love, is loyalty, and settles in for a nap.

After all, he was employed to keep the dragon under control, so there’s nowhere else he has to be.  
 


End file.
